December 7, 1941 is studied as one of the most brilliantly executed surprise attacks ever conceived, yet its own planners came to see it as a catastrophic strategic mistake. This episode traces the decades of resource rivalry behind it, including a 1934 memo describing how Standard Oil's Walter Teagle secured regulatory loopholes that made America the main fuel supplier to the Japanese war machine. When the oil embargo and the Hull note demanded withdrawal from China and Indochina, Japan's leaders, disciples of Alfred Thayer Mahan's decisive battle doctrine, gambled that sinking American battleships would buy six months to a year and break American morale.

We examine the missed signals: Billy Mitchell's 1924 warning, Dick Ellis's claimed British intelligence tip, the 14-part message that severed relations but never declared war, and the rad ...